London on the Brink: The Demented DIY Films of Martin Fuller

LOCATION: London, Newhaven, wherever this man takes his phone.

WORDS: Gareth E. Rees

Martin Fuller is a fisherman who also makes films about his meandering walks and bike rides through East London’s hinterlands – from the marshes and the Olympic Park down the Lea to the Thames, then sometimes out to sea.

Rusted barges, bones, wrecks, skeletal towers and pylons are recurring subjects. The films are made on Fuller’s phone and characterised by woozy experimental music, long and lingering shots, occasional drunken confrontations and surreal juxtapositions. The effect is like dreaming a walk where you can’t feel your legs and you’re being taken to bits of London you’d never think to go, and something strange is happening to your brain.

Ask the man himself about his films and he might well tell you “they’re shit”, but they’re not. They’re a precious record of a changing landscape, and capture the feelings of euphoria, boredom and terror you experience while moving through the lesser-trammelled back passages of the urban landscape.

Plus, they’re really short – so have a watch!

The Greenway to Beckton

 Tellytubby Wasteland

Stuck

Beyond Canning Town

Millennium Mills

This is Hackney Wick

The Container King of Hackney Wick

Bones and Bottles

For more films by Martin Fuller, check out his Vimeo page.

Or follow him on Twitter here.

He's 128ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gareth E. Rees is author of Marshland: Dreams & Nightmares on the Edge of London. His work appears in Mount London: Ascents In the Vertical CityAcquired for Development By: A Hackney Anthology, and the album A Dream Life of Hackney Marshes.

 

 

More Articles for You

A Journey Through The Ancient Commons of the Bristol Ring Road

Andy Thatcher explores the A4174 to seek out the relics of hard-won ancient rights

Unofficial Britain’s Weird and Wonderful Reads 2022

WORDS: Gareth E. Rees I’ve had an insanely busy year. It began with me finalising my debut short story collection, …

Climate Change, Ecological Breakdown & Neoliberal Anxiety in the English Edgelands

LOCATION: Southern England WORDS: Gareth E. Rees, author of Unofficial Britain “Global warming had gone past the tipping point, the …

Newcastle’s Haunted Alley: The Mysterious Origins of The White Lady of the Quayside.

Joe Barton and Jack Gardner search for the true life origins of a dockside spectre

Edgeland Visions: Heraldic Relics from an Imaginary Time

In advance of his exhibition in Margate, Matt James Healy shares his abstract visions of a world on the edge

Beer Cans, Wildflowers and a Dead Dog’s Ashes – A Dream Life Beneath the Pylon of Hackney Marsh

With the remains of his dead dog in a cardboard tube, Gareth E. Rees returns to the pylon that sparked his edgeland obsession